a. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods and apparatus for collecting poultry.
b. Description of the Prior Art
The method now used for collecting poultry, especially chickens, at the broiler house is a method which has been used for years. Usually, a flatbed truck transports a large number of individual cages to the broiler house, each cage having a small door in the top. The cages are stacked in a row in the broiler house. Acting in semi-darkness or under special lights, workmen grasp the chickens by the legs and stuff them through the small doors in those cages on the top of the stack. When a cage is full, it is manually lifted and moved to form a stack of filled cages. A forklift may be used to load the stack of filled cages onto the truck for transportation to the processing plant.
The construction of the cages and the necessary manual handling of the cages makes the collecting operation slow. The longer a worker is in the broiler house, the longer he is exposed to the powdery dust of chicken manure which fills the air in such an operation. That this exposure is a health hazard is well known. Also, manually lifting and moving filled cages is not easy work. As a result, it is very difficult to hire and keep employees who will do this type of work.
The insertion of the poultry through the small door of the conventional cages under poor lighting conditions increases the likelihood of bruising the poultry. Bruised poultry must be downgraded, resulting in lower profits. Larger door openings could be used but the larger doors would hamper movement of workers bringing poultry to the cages and the other problems involved would not be solved.
Various types of enclosures have been proposed for use in collecting poultry but none have really solved the basic problems inherent in this operation and none of them are being used commercially to any significant extent.
The present invention reduces the time that the worker is exposed to chicken manure, reduces the probability of bruising and completely eliminates the heavy manual labor involved in lifting and moving filled cages.